This myth, of Egyptian origin, formed part of the instruction given to those initiated in the Orphic mysteries, and written versions of it were buried with the dead.
HEAR now, O Soul, the last command of all— | |
| When thou hast left thine every mortal mark, | |
| And by the road that lies beyond recall | |
| Won through the desert of the Burning Dark, | |
| Thou shalt behold within a garden bright | 5 |
| A well, beside a cypress ivory-white. | |
| |
| Still is that well, and in its waters cool | |
| White, white and windless, sleeps that cypress tree: | |
| Who drinks but once from out her shadowy pool | |
| Shall thirst no more to all eternity. | 10 |
| Forgetting all, by all forgotten clean, | |
| His soul shall be with that which hath not been. | |
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| But thou, though thou be trembling with thy dread, | |
| And parched with thy desire more fierce than flame, | |
| Think on the stream wherefrom thy life was fed, | 15 |
| And that diviner fountain whence it came. | |
| Turn thee and cry—behold, it is not far— | |
| Unto the hills where living waters are. | |
| |
| ‘Lord, though I lived on earth, the child of earth, | |
| Yet was I fathered by the starry sky: | 20 |
| Thou knowest I came not of the shadows’ birth, | |
| Let me not die the death that shadows die. | |
| Give me to drink of the sweet spring that leaps | |
| From Memory’s fount, wherein no cypress sleeps.’ | |
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| Then shalt thou drink, O Soul, and therewith slake | 25 |
| The immortal longing of thy mortal thirst; | |
| So of thy Father’s life shalt thou partake, | |
| And be for ever that thou wert at first. | |
| Lost in remembered loves, yet thou more thou | |
| With them shalt reign in never-ending Now. | 30 |
